Golden times of field guides Calendar

After he personally nominated me for nature educator of the year for North America, I spent considerable time with country’s greatest field guide illustrator, Roger Tory Peterson.

My wife and I had the privilege of being with him and his wife in Jamestown, N.Y., where he was born, and where the Roger Tory Peterson Institute — devoted to nature education — is located. By that time, he had seen his nationally acclaimed 1980 work trumped in 1983 by a team of artists and writers who collaborated to produce a state-of-the-art “National Geographic Society Field Guide to the Birds of North America.”

It was astounding in its completeness, its supreme attention to detail of plumages as they changed with age and sex. Peterson subsequently heard criticisms that he complacently had not kept up with advances in identifications.

This criticism hurt him badly, he said, especially because it came from some of the top American field ornithologists whom he had mentored. The criticism drove him painfully to work on a final edition, a truly great effort that he confided was, as he had aged considerably in finishing it, “a constant battle between my eyes and hands to paint.” His death in 1996 necessitated a posthumous fourth edition publication in 2002. I love that book.

The National Geographic guide set a higher standard over Peterson in many ways. It contained more natural poses with birds, often showing behavioral traits in their habitat, something Peterson never really got into. But the National Geographic guide, to be fair, was a collaboration of many bird artists and writers.

In a time that was called “the battle of the field guides,” many new books came out. All had had the advantage of standing on Peterson’s shoulders, which set the standard. Peterson’s field guide was all done by one great man.

One advantage it has over the marvelous National Geographic guide, which I use extensively and value highly, is its uniformity of style and quality. When you look at families of birds in National Geographic, you see a great variability in style and even quality.

When the National Geographic guide first came out, I immediately bought it and used it almost exclusively, like just about every other serious birder. My Peterson was shelved. The new guide had more species, including rare birds from Asia that would show up in remote Alaska.

As DNA began to reveal the complexities of speciation, we began adding more birds to our North American list. Changes in taxonomy have since prompted National Geographic to produce a half-dozen new editions.

The birder’s world is insatiable for advancements to help their identifications. They readily buy anything new and improved. In 1997, Jack Griggs wrote “All the Birds of North America,” employing a team of bird artists. Its organization doesn’t always follow the normal taxonomical order established in other guides, but it does have some stunningly beautiful drawings.

If you took a survey today of the field guide most used by birders, it would surely be the “Sibley Guide to Birds,” first published by Allen Sibley in 2000. Though I own and frequently use a copy, it’s not my favorite. I appreciate that it shows more plumages for species than other guides, is extremely accurate and helps identify birds in flight better, depicting them as they show their open wings both from below and above.

It’s quickly apparent, for example, that a male rose breasted grosbeak has rosy underwings, while females have lemony yellow underwings. Those familiar with Peterson see that Sibley has inherited the former’s minimalistic illustrations, mostly with pure white backgrounds, and helpful lines pointing to important field marks. Sibley’s birds are very simple, even a bit flat, with little habitat, artistic detail, or distinctive behavior in the poses, and no mention of behavior in the text.

I don’t include any photographic field guides in my list. I find them least helpful. Bird artists can much more clearly depict birds in positions that reveal the features we need to see, and they’re not so encumbered by the problems with light that photographers have.

However, one photographic field guide deserves mention: Ken Kaufman’s “Field Guide to Birds of North America.” In 2005, it came out with a Spanish edition. I think that’s very significant because the vast majority of our migratory birds fly to Latin America for the winter, where they need people just as knowledgeable and excited about them to support their survival.

Though my favorite field guide is the National Geographic, like most serious birders, I own them all and use every one of them at various times for different reasons. In the history of nature study, no previous generation has had the luxury of so much great identification help for our passion.